Sleater-Kinney – No Cities to Love

Sometimes
I get lucky. I am not going to lie. For the past couple of months I have been
on a tremendous Sleater-Kinney kick. Every time I listen to their old albums
(they broke up in 2006) I think to myself “Wow I want this group back”. With
the help of the 2010s reunion vibe going on, I hoped against hope that
Sleater-Kinney would one day return to set things right, to essentially do all
the things I liked about them.

They
did. “No Cities to Love” is the answer I have wanted for a while. Back with
their full energy it sounds as if they never left. I greatly appreciate it. A
lot of bands have gotten back together after a long hiatus with mixed results.
My Bloody Valentine got back together and had a respectable album. So did
Polvo, though nobody cares about Polvo except me and about ten people, so
there’s that. For bigger events there has been a tinge of disappointment. The
Pixies came back with an album so bland it could be played in a CVS and nobody
would bat an eye. Yes it was that dismal. Honestly I wish the most recent album
by the Pixies didn’t exist.

“No
Cities to Love” seems likely to avoid a tepid fate. Sleater-Kinney never built
up a following that big. Rather they were content to be yet another band out of
the Pacific Northwest doing whatever they thought was best. Judging from their
first song “Bury Our Friends” it seems they are back. Hopefully they can have
the rest of the album sound that good, and perhaps even get a nice guest spot
on Portlandia? Only time will tell.